


always send me home

by Anonymous



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Magic, Awkward Kageyama Tobio, Body Dysphoria, Kageyama Tobio-centric, Multi, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Second Person, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, introspective, kind of, of sorts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:21:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25862743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: The realization takes your breath away, sinks down through your skin and settles into your bones, and you stare down at your hands, heartbeat pounding in your ears.(You are six years old, going on seven, when you realize you have died once already, when you realize that you are living out a story.)
Relationships: Kageyama Kazuyo & Kageyama Tobio, Kageyama Miwa & Kageyama Tobio, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added
Comments: 6
Kudos: 84
Collections: Anonymous





	1. born an old soul

You are six, almost seven, when you start to remember. When things start to splinter apart. 

Little things. The way the color of your eyes is wrong—they should be  _ brown _ , not blue—your limbs are too long and too short at the same time, your body off and aching almost like it’s not yours. 

(You wake up with aching limbs and a soreness buzzing beneath your skin that doesn’t go away. You eat breakfast with it, wash your face with it, and go to school with it. Your skin feels wrong, like an ill-fitting shirt.)

The way when your grandfather says your name or the teacher calls on you in class and the name feels wrong. 

You’re always waiting for someone else to answer, as though it’s not your name but someone else’s, and you have to remind yourself.  _ This is your name. He’s talking to you. _ It never does feel right, though. 

(“Tobio, welcome home,” your grandfather says, and you almost turn around to see if there’s someone behind you that he’s talking to.)

The way you sometimes forget where you are in your own room and expect to see pale blue walls and rumpled sheets instead of stark white and pale blankets perfectly folded. 

(You blink away the dissonance and reach to unzip your backpack. You rustle through its meager contents before pulling out your homework book.)

The way you sometimes blank out when you’re doing your homework, daydreaming, only to come to your senses staring down at a completed worksheet with ink on your hands, messy handwriting scrawled over the page in the wrong direction. 

(You stare down at your fingers, the dark ink stark against your pale skin. The homework is math. Simple. 

You don’t wash the ink off until dinner, when Miwa yelps at the sight of your ink-stained fingers and makes you go to the kitchen sink to rinse it off.

You turn the homework in anyways, and the teacher always smiles at you and reminds you to remember to write neater. You nod and walk back to your seat, something twisting inside of you.)

The way words seem to warp in your throat, tongue wrapping strangely around vowels and consonants, words coming out broken and sharp and wavering. As though you’ve forgotten how to speak. Like words from another language. 

(You say something to Miwa and she tilts her head, blinking owlishly at you. “Say that again?” she asks, and you don’t know what you said.)

The way you sometimes have to stop and stare at the signs outside of your house because the hiragana and katakana have become simple black squiggles that have no meaning, but you still understand the kanji perfectly. 

(You spend five minutes at the door of your house staring at the street sign that you know says your street name but the hiragana and katakana characters just aren’t clicking and you don’t know what it says. 

You mispronounce the kanji at school, sounds gliding out of your mouth that make the teacher stop and correct you, make the students around giggle as you get it wrong, again and again. But this is right, you want to say. This is how it’s supposed to be pronounced. 

The teacher smiles and corrects you again, before moving on to talk about magic and talents. (Something about that rubs you the wrong way.) Your face is hot and you wish the ground would swallow you up.)

The way you always expect your mother to be home when you come back from school, forgetting that she’s been gone for more than a year. Your father, too. 

(When you come back from school and your grandfather calls you from the kitchen with your name—that’s not your name—you expect to hear. More voices, other voices. The sound of people, signs of more people living within these walls. 

But there’s only you and your grandfather because Miwa isn’t home yet and that isn’t your name and this body isn’t right and you couldn’t read the street sign this morning and you keep wanting to pronounce kanji the way that everyone says is wrong and everything is wrong and this is all just too much. 

You don’t answer your grandfather—not your grandfather, you never lived with your grandfather—when he asks how your day was, instead turning around and running up the stairs as fast you can, heart pounding and breath short.)

* * *

You’re crying in your room, curled up on your bed, braced in the corner and wrapped in the blankets with sobs wracking your shoulders. You’re not really sure why you’re crying. 

Your grandfather comes in, rubbing soothing circles over your back and asking you what’s wrong. 

You don’t know. Your eyes are burning, and your face feels sticky from all your tears and you feel so ashamed for letting your grandfather see you cry like a little kid even though you are a little kid and you just—

It’s all you much, and you almost burst into tears again. 

“Tobio,” your grandfather says softly, wiping away your tears with a gentle thumb. You don’t answer.  _ That’s not my name _ , you think, eyes burning. You close them, clench your fists in your shirt. The fabric rumples. 

“Tobio, do you want to go outside and play with Miwa for a little bit?”

You don’t. But your grandfather sounds worried and you don’t want to worry him because this is a problem with yourself, and so you keep your eyes closed but nod.

Your grandfather helps you to your feet, your hand—too small, too pale, too wrong—held gently in his rough and worn palm, and takes you outside, where your sister—should be younger, you’re the older sibling not the younger never the younger—is tossing up a volleyball. 

“Miwa,” your grandfather calls out, and she stops, holding the ball in both hands as she turns to the two of you.

“Mind if we join you?” he says, and Miwa shakes her head, and throws the ball in her hands to him. Your grandfather lets go of your hand to hold the volleyball. 

You almost reach to take it back again, but you quash down that feeling, something angry and shameful curling through you. You aren’t a child. (But you are.)

“This is how you bump.” Your grandfather demonstrates, arms held out before him, hands clasped together. “Now you try,” Miwa adds in, beaming. 

You mimic your grandfather as best as you can, tiny-wrong hands coming forward together, arms held out before you. Your grandfather smiles and tosses the ball to you, and you clumsily receive it, worn leather of the ball hitting your arms with a dull thump before it bounces off and hits the ground. The ball rolls over to the wall. Miwa runs to scoop it up. 

“That was good!” she praises as she stands up. 

The motion is familiar, as though you’ve done it before—there’s a vague recollection, a feeling of the ball hitting your arms, your fingertips, voices of people around you, the sound of rubber squeaking on the floor, thuds of people jumping and balls hitting the floor. Laughter and bright lights on polished wood floors. 

“Tobio?” You blink and the world sharpens back into focus, like a watercolor blurring into a photograph. “Sorry,” you say. “I was thinking.” Your tongue stumbles over the words, as though it meant to say something else. 

Miwa tosses the ball to you, and you bump it back, shaky but high. Drop down, lean up. She bumps it to your grandfather, and the three of you pass the ball around like that. 

Finally, your grandfather catches the ball instead of bumping it and tucks it under his arm. “You’re getting pretty good at that,” he says to both of you, and Miwa grins, pleased. You flush at the praise, cheeks burning, even though it’s such a little thing. 

He shows you how to set the ball next, and you mimic him again. Spiking next, and then you and Miwa are peppering—bump,set, spike your grandfather explains—the ball back and forth. 

Something seems familiar about this. 

You fumble with the ball and Miwa shouts as it rolls away. She wipes at her brow as you bring the ball back, strands of black hair sticking together with sweat. She braces her hands on her knees for a moment before straightening. Her eyes are such a bright blue, you think as you toss the ball to her. Just like yours. 

Wait. Something’s not right, a niggling, nagging thread of something still tugging at you. You pause, hands held out before you in preparation to receive. There’s a faint stirring of recollection—blue eyes. Black hair. Volleyball. Your name, Tobio. Kageyama Tobio. 

A story, years ago, that you liked to watch with your little sister. About a boy who learned to fly and a king who learned to reclaim his crown and a game that meant so much more to them than just a game. 

The realization takes your breath away, sinks down through your skin and settles into your bones, and you stare down at your hands, heartbeat pounding in your ears. 

Kageyama Tobio, the name on your homework reads. 

(You are six years old, going on seven, when you realize you have died once already, when you realize that you are living out a story. But then this world isn’t completely right, either. This world has magic and dragons and  _ this isn’t right. _ )

“Tobio?” Miwa’s voice snaps you out of your thoughts. 

“Oh, sorry,” you say, mouth moving without you thinking, and toss the ball to her. She bumps it back, and you set it back on autopilot, still in shock. The ball slips from your fingers and to the ground. 

Miwa picks it up, and you start over again, losing yourself to the rhythm of tossing and hitting, to the haze of your thoughts. The leather of the volleyball slaps against your skin loudly, leaves your arms red and sore. 

* * *

You go through the rest of the day in a daze. 

When the golden sunlight of the late afternoon starts to cast long shadows over the grass of your backyard and the crows start to call to each other with loud, piercing cries, your grandfather calls you back inside. 

He makes dinner while you sit at the kitchen table with your homework, staring down at the paper, seeing but not seeing at all.

The rice tastes like nothing in your mouth, curry like ashes even though this is supposed to be your favorite food. (Not  _ your _ favorite.)

You go up to your room and do your homework and brush your face and wash your face and pad into your room clad in soft pajamas and slide under the covers and your grandfather flicks the lights off, still peering at you in concern. 

“Goodnight,” he says, and you echo him. You feel so empty, like you really are just a hollow piece of space bouncing back everything that's said to you. He closes the door quietly and you are left alone in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling. 

You don’t sleep, even after the light in the hallway flicks off and the entire house is silent and you can hear every breath you take in the quiet. 

You stare into the darkness with wide open eyes and try to remember who you are, who you were. Your name. (You can’t, and you fall asleep as the first rays of dawn spill onto the floor of your room, your face sticky with tears.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> largely unedited, written in a burst of coffee and plot bunny fueled inspiration. 
> 
> fic title & chapter title come from [eyes wide open](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4VJyfCcOJc) by sabrina carpenter
> 
> _everybody loves to tell me i was born an old soul // and they always send me home_
> 
> concrit welcome.


	2. wake me up

The morning after feels like a dream. You wake up to the sound of laughter and dishes clinking distantly, with a dry mouth and blurry eyes and fatigue clinging to your bones. 

Everything happens as it always does - your grandfather makes breakfast, he and Miwa talk loudly and laugh at the table while you eat, and you listen to them, chewing on your rice and playing with your chopsticks. 

It almost doesn’t feel real, you think, tapping at your chair with one hand as you eat. 

It feels like a dream. Surreal. Floaty. Everything is sharp and bright, stark and clear-cut. You can see dust motes floating in the sunlight spilling onto the kitchen tile, like little stars illuminated. Can hear the clatter of chopsticks against porcelain, the sound of chair legs scraping against tile. It feels like you’re dreaming, though. 

If you’re a little more quiet this morning, a little more withdrawn, neither Miwa nor your grandfather comment on it. Your grandfather had asked you if you were alright as you slipped into your chair, and you nodded, picking up your chopsticks. 

He didn’t ask again. You’re fine. 

They’re probably trying to give you a little bit of space, after yesterday, you think, slipping out of your chair and pattering towards the bathroom. 

You brush your teeth and wash your hair and put your homework in your bag and head downstairs. Miwa is already heading out of the door, rushing out with a shouted “See you!”, like a burst of sunlight or a breath of fresh air, there and then gone. 

You slip your shoes on quietly, slip out the door with a quiet goodbye. Your grandfather still looks worried, and you try to smile at him reassuringly, try to work your face into what a child’s should look like, instead of your quiet blankness. It seems to work—he smiles back.

You’re fine.

* * *

You don't remember school that day. You walk into your house and take off your shoes and are struck by the realization that you don't remember what happened at school that day. Open your bag and take out your notebook—page after page of doodles. From today. You don't remember drawing them. 

You go through the motions of dinner in much the same way, fill out your worksheets and think about last night, crying in the dark. 

Wash your face, brush your teeth, change into pajamas. This is routine, methodical.

You wait until the light in the hallway has been flicked off, until you can hear the gentle creak of your grandfather’s door closing until you slip out from under the covers as quietly as you can. 

Tiptoe to your desk and flick the light onto its dimmest setting. The warm glow casts everything into stark shadow. You flip open a notebook and start writing in it. 

Force yourself to write in hiragana and katakana, not just the dancing strokes of kanji that flow from your pencil so easily, or the structured letters of English that you find yourself writing sometimes. 

You’re not going to be able to sleep tonight. Might as well do something useful. 

You shift in your seat as the hours wear on you, but you don’t think to stop, losing yourself in the methodical repetition of words, until pale sunlight filters through the blink of your window and catches your attention. 

You look at the clock. 3:14 AM—you finally switch off your light and close your journal and crawl back into your bed. 

You fall asleep within minutes. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Wake Me Up by Avicii  
> updates will be sporadic—i have no outline for this.  
> concrit welcome.

**Author's Note:**

> largely unedited, written in a burst of coffee and plot bunny fueled inspiration. 
> 
> fic title & chapter title come from [eyes wide open](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4VJyfCcOJc) by sabrina carpenter
> 
> _everybody loves to tell me i was born an old soul // and they always send me home_
> 
> concrit welcome.


End file.
